Breaking news has more ways to reach the masses than ever before, be it through Twitter, one of the countless tickers, scrolls or info boxes encroaching on your remaining television real estate or incessant text and email alerts.
Or, at the Modern Pharmacy, a Concord institution run by the same family for more than 50 years, on an 8 1/2-by-11 inch piece of paper taped to a glass door.
The pharmacy handled the announcement of its recent ownership change the same way it’s done business for more than five decades: old school. A computer printout on the front door addressed the announcement with a statement that began “Dear loyal customers, news alert!” and contained the perfectly charming note to “stay tuned for more updates.”
Stay tuned? To an inanimate portal that isn’t a smartphone?
But that’s how customers have learned any and all information relating to the pharmacy since the 1960s – by passing through the door. Chain pharmacies started multiplying more than math teachers, sometimes directly across the street from each other, while many shoppers and organizations turned to mail-order prescriptions, but the drug the Modern Pharmacy’s loyal fan base kept coming back for was the face-to-face Kirsch charm.
The only tweets here come from birds hanging out in the bushes that line the storefront. Even owner Walter Kirsch, who started the business March 7, 1963, recognizes that there is now more than a little irony in the name.
“When we started in 1963, ‘modern’ fit,” Kirsch said. “Now we’re the oldest store in town.”
And for the first time ever, a store in different hands. Kirsch recently sold the business to Chad Beane, who officially took over July 22. Selling the pharmacy was only an option for Kirsch if he felt comfortable his customers would be taken care of, and though the name will change – it will be called Granite State Pharmacy – Beane will continue to operate the business as an independent pharmacy.
“I woke up about 2 o’clock in the morning the other day and thought, only three more days under the Kirsch name,” Kirsch, who described the transition as bittersweet, said. “But I think we sold to as good a person as we could possibly have to keep that (tradition) up.”
“They have such a loyal following at this point, we’ll have to work hard to follow their legacy,” Beane said. “But we’ll make sure it gets done.”
That was the attitude that Kirsch brought to the business when he opened it. Building from the ground up meant starting without a single prescription customer and working 84-hour weeks for the first few years.
“But when you’re young and foolish (you can get away with that,)” Kirsch said.
It didn’t take long for the roots to grow, though. The pharmacy had a soda fountain along one wall that would attract a fiercely loyal lunchtime crowd, with Kirsch’s mother-in-law serving a group that filled every stool and snaked into a line around noontime. Many of the customers from the original era have children or grandchildren who still frequent the pharmacy; Kirsch’s first-ever non-family employee still lives just around the corner on Broadway.
The store even survived a rather unusual move, as the arrival of a bank on the spot the pharmacy initially occupied led to the building being lifted and carried to a new foundation a couple hundred feet away in 1974. It has been there, at 5 Clinton St., ever since.
When it opened, the Modern Pharmacy became either the 10th or 11th independently-owned pharmacy in the city, Kirsch said. That helped create a network of local businessmen who met monthly, shared stories and “used to talk about whether the minimum prescription price should be $1 or less.”
“I remember thinking no chain store would ever come to a little burg like this,” Kirsch said.
Over time, though, things began to change. The soda fountain was removed in the mid-’80s after Kirsch’s mother-in-law passed away. And all of a sudden chain pharmacies started sprouting up like Monopoly properties all over the city. One of them, a Rite-Aid, opened in 1998 in a building that is about 100 feet away from the Modern Pharmacy at their closest points.
Contrary to popular opinion, though, that wasn’t the hardest pill to swallow. It wasn’t chain stores that started chipping away at business – in fact, Kirsch said, the Rite-Aid’s appearance led to an immediate up-tick in sales – but rather changes in how insurance companies handle prescriptions and the advent of additional methods of ordering that conspired to crumble the old business model.
“Mail-order pharmacy, that’s probably our worst nightmare,” Kirsch said, noting that many organizations now require their employees to use mail-order prescriptions. “It seems like they are turning their backs on the little local businesses. Each year over the last 10 it fractured a little more off. But we had customers stick with us in spite of all that.”
Hundreds of them, actually. Times and procedures may have changed, but the Kirsch family remained a constant, and there was always a familiar smiling face behind the counter. Walter Kirsch has nine children, all of whom have worked in the store at some point, including three who still do (and at least two who will continue working under the new ownership). He has also seen grandchildren punch a time card or two.
When Walter decided to step away from full-time work more than 15 years ago, he entrusted the store to his daughter, Lynn, who managed the operation until the recent sale.
Despite declining sales, the Kirsch family toughed it out because of their commitment to a beloved customer base. Walter said he’d received other offers along the way, mostly from chains, but refused to budge until he and his family were certain the pharmacy would remain independent and dedicated to its long-time clientele.
“It was very important to turn over our customers to another independent owner,” Lynn Kirsch said.
That importance is not lost on Beane, who co-owns another independent pharmacy in Newport.
“Taking care of the customers is certainly the priority, and it’s always been the priority. Three-quarters of the staff will still be here, so people will still see the same faces on a daily basis,” Beane said. “I’ll be the one transitioning, not the customers. I think many customers that come in will see a seamless change.”
After more than 50 years, that’s no small feat. But it’s the only way Walter and his family could envision the change taking place. After all, he ran the business with a dozen or so blood relatives, but over the years he and his family have acquired hundreds of additional honorary Kirsches.
“We’re glad we found an independent person to take over, because we truly do love our customers,” Lynn Kirsch said. “They really are part of the family.”
